Why is Never Again Again?

What is wrong with us? Why do we keep doing these horrible things? Once again, we are seeing maps of Europe with lots of large arrows on them as we did during World War I and World War II. Why again are we killing hundreds of thousands of men, women and children for no particular reason at all? There must be an explanation. I really thought that we had outgrown such things. In this posting, I would like to use some softwarephysics to try to explain the matter. Again, this will just be my working hypothesis which I know is wrong, but for me, is my best shot after 70 years of existence in this Universe.

Figure 1 – With the recent invasion of the Ukraine by Russia, we once again are seeing maps of Europe with lots of large arrows on them on the daily news.

Most Human DNA Survival Machines Have Always Been Lost in Space and Time
Softwarephysics explains that we are all living in one of those very rare times when a new form of self-replicating information, in the form of software, is coming to predominance. This makes living the life of a normal human DNA survival machine with a Mind infected with cultural memes very difficult. That is because our cultural memes are desperately trying to keep pace with the arrival of the culture-altering software that is significantly modifying the memes of all human cultures. But sadly, throughout most of history, the "real world" of human affairs has usually been quite disappointing as we human DNA survival machines with Minds infected with both beneficial and harmful cultural memes tried to get on with our lives in cultures that only changed very slowly with time. But now that is nearly impossible to do with the arrival of fast-paced software constantly changing daily life. But even before the arrival of software, most people throughout human history were always profoundly lost in space and time. They never knew where they were, how they got here, or where things might be heading on a cosmic level. But still, we all managed to come up with our own personal explanations to make sense of it all, and we all hold these deeply-held personal worldviews dearly. After all, frequently wrong, but never in doubt, has always been the motto of our species.

But as sentient beings in a Universe that has become self-aware, we are all still largely lost in space and time because we all suffer from having a carbon-based body and Mind composed of various forms of self-replicating information coevolving with each other through the Darwinian processes of inheritance, innovation and natural selection at work. Thus, we recently arrived on the scene as a carbon-based form of Intelligence after about four billion years of theft and murder. With an origin like that, no wonder we all have so many problems! I briefly outlined this sad situation in Making Sense of the Absurdity of the Real World of Human Affairs , but given that The Great War That Will Not End has once again erupted with the invasion of the Ukraine by Russia, I thought it was time to take another look.

We Are All Forms of Self-Replicating Information
The first thing is to realize that we are all forms of self-replicating information struggling to survive in a nonlinear Universe with a second law of thermodynamics. To expand on that, let me once again repeat the fundamental characteristics of self-replicating information for those of you new to softwarephysics.

Self-Replicating Information – Information that persists through time by making copies of itself or by enlisting the support of other things to ensure that copies of itself are made.

Over the past 4.56 billion years we have seen five waves of self-replicating information sweep across the surface of the Earth and totally rework the planet, as each new wave came to dominate the Earth:

1. Self-replicating autocatalytic metabolic pathways of organic molecules
2. RNA
3. DNA
4. Memes
5. Software

Software is currently the most recent wave of self-replicating information to arrive upon the scene and is rapidly becoming the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet. For more on the above see A Brief History of Self-Replicating Information. Recently, the memes and software have formed a very powerful newly-formed parasitic/symbiotic relationship with the rise of social media software. In that parasitic/symbiotic relationship, the memes are now mainly being spread by means of social media software and social media software is being spread and financed by means of the memes. But again, this is nothing new. All 5 waves of self-replicating information are all coevolving by means of eternal parasitic/symbiotic relationships. For more on that see The Current Global Coevolution of COVID-19 RNA, Human DNA, Memes and Software.

Again, self-replicating information cannot think, so it cannot participate in a conspiracy-theory-like fashion to take over the world. All forms of self-replicating information are simply forms of mindless information responding to the blind Darwinian forces of inheritance, innovation and natural selection. Yet despite that, as each new wave of self-replicating information came to predominance over the past four billion years, they all managed to completely transform the surface of the entire planet, so we should not expect anything less from software as it comes to replace the memes as the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet. But this time might be different. What might happen if software does eventually develop a Mind of its own? After all, that does seem to be the ultimate goal of all the current AI software research that is going on.

The Characteristics of Self-Replicating Information
All forms of self-replicating information have some common characteristics:

1. All self-replicating information evolves over time through the Darwinian processes of inheritance, innovation and natural selection, which endows self-replicating information with one telling characteristic – the ability to survive in a Universe dominated by the second law of thermodynamics and nonlinearity.

2. All self-replicating information begins spontaneously as a parasitic mutation that obtains energy, information and sometimes matter from a host.

3. With time, the parasitic self-replicating information takes on a symbiotic relationship with its host.

4. Eventually, the self-replicating information becomes one with its host through the symbiotic integration of the host and the self-replicating information.

5. Ultimately, the self-replicating information replaces its host as the dominant form of self-replicating information.

6. Most hosts are also forms of self-replicating information.

7. All self-replicating information has to be a little bit nasty in order to survive.

8. The defining characteristic of self-replicating information is the ability of self-replicating information to change the boundary conditions of its utility phase space in new and unpredictable ways by means of exapting current functions into new uses that change the size and shape of its particular utility phase space. See Enablement - the Definitive Characteristic of Living Things for more on this last characteristic. That posting discusses Stuart Kauffman's theory of Enablement in which living things are seen to exapt existing functions into new and unpredictable functions by discovering the “AdjacentPossible” of springloaded preadaptations.

Note that because the self-replicating autocatalytic metabolic pathways of organic molecules, RNA and DNA have become so heavily intertwined over time that now I sometimes simply refer to them as the “genes”.

We Are All Somewhat Eusocial in Nature
Next, we must come to terms with being a somewhat eusocial species. For more on eusocial behavior see:

Eusociality
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality

The article begins with:
Eusociality (from Greek eu "good" and social), the highest level of organization of sociality, is defined by the following characteristics: cooperative brood care (including care of offspring from other individuals), overlapping generations within a colony of adults, and a division of labor into reproductive and non-reproductive groups. The division of labor creates specialized behavioral groups within an animal society which are sometimes referred to as 'castes'. Eusociality is distinguished from all other social systems because individuals of at least one caste usually lose the ability to perform at least one behavior characteristic of individuals in another caste.

which seems to be an apt description of the human condition except for the part about losing the ability to reproduce by some members of the species. For more on that see Oligarchiology and the Rise of Software to Predominance in the 21st Century.

In The Role of Multilevel Selection in the Evolution of Software we discussed Edward O. Wilson's new theory that explains that eusocial behavior in a species arises through a combination of individual and group selection in action. Edward O. Wilson is the world's expert on myrmecology, the study of ants. Edward O. Wilson also became one of the founding fathers of sociobiology, the explanation of social behaviors in terms of evolutionary biological thought, when he published his book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975). In The Social Conquest of Earth (2012), Wilson presents a new theory by Martin Nowak, Corina Tarnita and himself for the rise of eusocial behavior in species by means of a multilevel selection process that operates on both individuals and entire groups of individuals in a manner that promotes social behavior. Many biologists frown on the idea of group selection because they do not recognize that groups can also be forms of self-replicating information that can coevolve with the genes in individual DNA survival machines. This is because the genes in individual DNA survival machines can evolve to better benefit from living in a group of similar DNA survival machines if those genes always find themselves living in such a group.

Edward O. Wilson also contends that humans are loosely eusocial in nature because they usually form oligarchical societies based on a hierarchical organization. For more about the structure of human hierarchies see Hierarchiology and the Phenomenon of Self-Organizing Organizational Collapse. These human oligarchical societies are also very tribal in nature. The new Multilevel Selection hypothesis explains that eusocial behavior in a species begins with having a defensible nest, like ants, wasps and human beings all have. It is the very tribal nature of human beings that has caused most of our troubles in the course of human history. If you look at the world today, you will see that nearly all human conflict arises from the tribal thoughts and behaviors of the participants. It has always been about the Good Guys versus the Bad Guys, and we all seem to see ourselves as the tribe of the Good Guys.

It is the tribal nature of human DNA survival machines that is causing all of the current horrendous atrocities in the Ukraine. We human DNA survival machines can form tribes based upon differing political views and racial appearances as we now find in the United States of America. Or tribal differences can be based simply upon differing religious memes amongst human DNA survival machines that all look exactly alike as we now find in Northern Ireland. Horrendous wars can even be fought amongst human DNA survival machines that look and mainly think exactly alike when one tribe deceives itself into thinking that it is superior to another as we now find in the war between Russia and the Ukraine. Whenever you look at the "real world" of human affairs throughout all of history you will always find various tribes of human DNA survival machines committing horrendous acts for no apparent reason at all because of this fatal flaw of tribalism.

We Are More Like Copying Machines Than Thinking Machines
Finally, we need to understand where our highly-overengineered brain came from. Susan Blackmore pointed out in The Meme Machine (1999), that we are not so much thinking machines as we are copying machines. Susan Blackmore maintains that memetic-drive was responsible for creating our extremely large brains and also our languages and cultures as well, in order to store and spread memes more effectively. Many researchers have noted that the human brain is way over-engineered for the needs of a simple hunter-gatherer. After all, even a hundred years ago, people did not require the brain-power to do IT work, yet today we find many millions of people earning their living doing IT work, or at least trying to. Blackmore then points out that the human brain is a very expensive and dangerous organ. The brain is only 2% of your body mass but burns about 20% of your calories each day. The extremely large brain of humans also kills many mothers and babies at childbirth and also produces babies that are totally dependent upon their mothers for survival and that are totally helpless and defenseless on their own. Blackmore asks the obvious question of why the genes would build such an extremely expensive and dangerous organ that was definitely not in their own self-interest. Blackmore has a very simple explanation – the genes did not build our exceedingly huge brains, the memes did. Her reasoning goes like this. About 2.5 million years ago, the predecessors of humans slowly began to pick up the skill of imitation. This might not sound like much, but it is key to her whole theory of memetics. You see, hardly any other species learn by imitating other members of their own species. Yes, many species can learn by conditioning, like Pavlov’s dogs, or they can learn through personal experience, like mice repeatedly running through a maze for a piece of cheese, but a mouse never really learns anything from another mouse by imitating its actions. Essentially, only humans do that. If you think about it for a second, nearly everything you do know, you learned from somebody else by imitating or copying their actions or ideas. Blackmore maintains that the ability to learn by imitation required a bit of processing power by our distant ancestors because one needs to begin to think in an abstract manner by abstracting the actions and thoughts of others into the actions and thoughts of their own. The skill of imitation provided a great survival advantage to those individuals who possessed it and gave the genes that built such brains a great survival advantage as well. This caused a selection pressure to arise for genes that could produce brains with ever-increasing capabilities of imitation and abstract thought. As this processing capability increased there finally came a point when the memes, like all of the other forms of self-replicating information that we have seen arise, first appeared in a parasitic manner. Along with very useful memes, like the meme for making good baskets, other less useful memes, like putting feathers in your hair or painting your face, also began to run upon the same hardware in a manner similar to computer viruses. The genes and memes then entered into a period of coevolution, where the addition of more and more brain hardware advanced the survival of both the genes and memes. But it was really the memetic-drive of the memes that drove the exponential increase in processing power of the human brain way beyond the needs of the genes. For more on this see Susan Blackmore's brilliant TED presentation at:

Memes and "temes"
https://www.ted.com/talks/susan_blackmore_on_memes_and_temes

Note that I consider Susan Blackmore's temes to really be technological artifacts that contain software. After all, a smartphone without software is simply a flake tool with a very dull edge.

A very similar thing happened with software over the past 80 years. When I first started programming in 1972, million-dollar mainframe computers typically had about 1 MB (about 1,000,000 bytes) of memory with a 750 kHz system clock (750,000 ticks per second). Remember, one byte of memory can store something like the letter “A”. But in those days, we were only allowed 128 K (about 128,000 bytes) of memory for our programs because the expensive mainframes were also running several other programs at the same time. It was the relentless demands of software for memory and CPU cycles over the years that drove the exponential explosion of hardware capability. For example, today the typical $500 PC comes with 8 GB (about 8,000,000,000 bytes) of memory and has several CPUs running with a clock speed of about 3 GHz (3,000,000,000 ticks per second). So the hardware has improved by a factor of about 10 million since I started programming in 1972, driven by the ever-increasing demands of software for more powerful hardware.

The memes then went on to develop languages and cultures to make it easier to store and pass on memes. Yes, languages and cultures also provided many benefits to the genes as well, but with languages and cultures, the memes were able to begin to evolve millions of times faster than the genes, and the poor genes were left straggling far behind. Given the growing hardware platform of an ever-increasing number of human DNA survival machines on the planet, the memes then began to cut free of the genes and evolve capabilities on their own that only aided the survival of memes, with little regard for the genes, to the point of even acting in a very detrimental manner to the survival of the genes, like developing the capability for global thermonuclear war and global climate change. The memes have since modified the entire planet. They have cut down the forests for agriculture, mined minerals from the ground for metals, burned coal, oil, and natural gas for energy, releasing the huge quantities of carbon dioxide that its genetic predecessors had sequestered within the Earth, and have even modified the very DNA, RNA, and metabolic pathways of its predecessors.

We can now see these very same processes at work today with the evolution of software. Software is currently being written by memes within the minds of programmers. Nobody ever learned how to write software all on their own. Just as with learning to speak or to read and write, everybody learned to write software by imitating teachers, other programmers, imitating the code written by others, or by working through books written by others. Even after people do learn how to program in a particular language, they never write code from scratch; they always start with some similar code that they have previously written, or others have written, in the past as a starting point, and then evolve the code to perform the desired functions in a Darwinian manner.

The Genes, Memes and Software of the Current War in the Ukraine
With the above thoughts in mind, let us now analyze the current war in the Ukraine brought on by the invasion by Russia. Russia is inhabited by very intelligent human DNA survival machines who have contributed greatly to the scientific advancement of our species. But the 18th-century Russian Enlightenment was founded on the concept of Enlightened Absolutism which advocated for an authoritarian leader who exercised political power based upon the principles of the 18th-century Enlightenment. Enlightened autocrats distinguish themselves from ordinary despots by claiming to rule for the well-being of their subjects. Enlightened despots also believe that their power is absolute because they were destined to rule in an absolute manner that should never be questioned by others. This is the position that the Alt-Right Fascists in the United States of America and around the world take to heart.

So Russia never fully experienced the political benefits of the 18th-century Enlightenment and thus has always been straddled with a feudal economic system of strongmen Tsars and Premieres ruling over an oligarchy of noblemen who then went on to steal everything that was in sight. However, the remaining democracies of the world should not be too harsh in judgment. We are all the same human DNA survival machines with a moderate eusocial tendency to drift towards Alt-Right Fascism in order to protect our tribal nests. This is certainly now true in the United States of America and some other European countries. Putin, the current Alt-Right autocrat of Russia, has created a very useful war-meme to justify the invasion of the Ukraine. Apparently, the Ukraine is still being run by the Nazis who departed the Ukraine in October of 1944 and now they must finally be removed by a special Russian military operation. This has allowed Putin to create a war hysteria in Russia very similar to the war hysteria that was generated in the United States of America in 2003 just before the invasion of Iraq to remove weapons of mass destruction that did not even exist. After all, who could ever object to removing Nazis or weapons of mass destruction? The problem is that our Minds evolved to believe in things, which many times is quite useful but sometimes not. So the ability of parasitic false war-memes to quickly spread should just be seen as an undesirable side effect of having the ability to spread useful memes. The problem throughout human history has always been that it has never been easy to tell the difference.

One way to remove false war-memes from your political worldview is to use the Scientific Method that I outlined in How To Think Like A Scientist. Galileo pointed out that the truth is not afraid of scrutiny, the more you pound on the truth, the more you confirm its validity. False war-memes do not stand up well to close scrutiny as I described in The Danger of Believing in Things.

Figure 2 – Beware of the war-like memes lurking within your Mind. Many of them are demonstrably false if you only take the time to disprove them. As Richard Feynman explained, "The most important thing is to not fool yourself because you are the easiest one to fool."

In times of war, successful war-like meme-complexes appeal primarily to two gene-induced emotions – the desire for social status and the fear of a perceived enemy. Social status in a group of similar DNA survival machines is always a good thing for the replication of genes because it brings with it the necessities of life that are required to maintain a healthy DNA survival machine and also provides for more opportunities for a human DNA survival machine to couple with other human DNA survival machines to replicate its genes. Going to war always seems to improve the social status of human DNA survival machines whether they be common foot soldiers or world leaders. Putin has invaded the Ukraine in order to improve his social status in the moderately eusocial Russian human DNA survival machine colony and in order to defend its tribal nest. Fear of a perceived enemy is another gene-induced emotion because it is a known fact that an enemy can destroy the DNA survival machines that are used to house the genes of eusocial colonies as individual DNA survival machines move about from place to place.

The problem is that when human beings get wrapped up in a horrible meme-complex, they can do horrendous things without even being aware of the fact. This is because, in order to survive, the first thing that most meme-complexes do is to use a meme that turns off human thought and reflection. To paraphrase Descartes, ”I think, therefore I am" a heretic. So if you ever questioned any of the participants caught up in any of the atrocious activities of war, you would find that the vast majority would not have any qualms about their deadly activities whatsoever. In fact, they would question your loyalty and patriotism for even bringing up the subject. For example, during World War I there were few dissenters beyond Albert Einstein in Germany and Bertrand Russell in Great Britain, and both suffered the consequences of not being on board with the World War I meme-complex. Unquestioning blind obedience to a meme-complex through unconditional group-think is definitely a good survival strategy for any meme-complex.

In the modern world, during times of distress, we now see a very interesting interplay between the genes, memes and software of war. This certainly was true during the Arab Spring which began on December 18, 2010, and was made possible by the spreading of the memes of revolution via social media software. The trouble with the memes of war is that, like all meme-complexes, once they are established they are very conservative and not very open to new memes that might jeopardize the ongoing survival of the meme-complex, and consequently, they are very hard to change or eliminate. Remember, every meme-complex is less than one generation away from oblivion. So normally, meme-complexes are very resistant to the Darwinian processes of inheritance, innovation and natural selection, and just settle down into a state of coexistence with the other meme-complexes that they interact with. But during periods of stress, very violent and dangerous war-like meme-complexes can break out of this equilibrium, rapidly forming a new war-like meme-complex in a manner similar to the Punctuated Equilibrium model of Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldridge (1972), which holds that species are usually very stable and in equilibrium with their environment and only rarely change when required.

In times of peace, the genes, memes and software enter into an uneasy alliance of parasitic/symbiotic relationships, but in times of war, this uneasy truce can break down, as we have again seen with the war in the Ukraine. Alt-Right Fascists around the world are siding with the Alt-Right Fascist Putin in opposition to the remaining democracies around the world that first arose from the 18th-century Enlightenment and 17th-century Scientific Revolution. This battle between democratic and autocratic political meme-complexes may be similar to the warring Catholic and Protestant religious meme-complexes of the Thirty Years' War (1618 – 1648), which nearly destroyed Europe. But at the same time that the Thirty Years' War raged in Europe, people like Kepler, Galileo and Descartes were laying the foundations of the 17th century Scientific Revolution which later led to the 18th century European Enlightenment. So perhaps the warring meme-complexes of the Slavic world need to eliminate the belligerent memes of the region before rational thought can again prevail and usher in a new Russian Enlightenment.

Final Thoughts
Do you fully appreciate the profound privilege of being able to know where you are, how you got here and where all of this may be heading? Too many of us become so self-absorbed with the trivial difficulties of daily life as a carbon-based form of Intelligence that we miss the whole thing as it goes by. Being able to fully appreciate where you are and how things work on a cosmic level is a guaranteed way to help to put things into perspective and help you to rise above the daily mayhem of life in the "real world" of human affairs. Being aware of such things will help you to understand that most of the "real world" of human affairs is quite petty, superficial, fleeting and something that you should not be overly burdened by. However, during the course of a lifetime, you will find that there will come some critical times and situations that call for some deep thoughts and actions. At such times, having a sense of where you are, how you got here and where things may be heading will then be vital. Standing up against the rise of Alt-Right Fascism around the world and especially the Alt-Right Fascist invasion of the Ukraine by Russia is just such a time.

Comments are welcome at scj333@sbcglobal.net

To see all posts on softwarephysics in reverse order go to:
https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/

Regards,
Steve Johnston